


Tremble Like a Flower

by Silberias



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/F, F/M, Multi, a bit smutty, deleted scene from another fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-24
Updated: 2014-11-24
Packaged: 2018-02-26 20:53:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,598
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2666000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Silberias/pseuds/Silberias
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the middle of the night, in a nameless castle in Dorne, Sansa chooses to bed her new husband and his lover. She belongs to herself for the first time in forever, and it is their arms she will take comfort in.</p><p>A discarded scene from "For Fear Tonight is All" that no longer fits.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tremble Like a Flower

  
_Because my love for you_   
_Would break my heart in two_   
_If you should fall_   
_Into my arms_   
_And tremble like a flower_

>   * _David Bowie’s “Let’s Dance”_
> 


They were staying at a small keep for a few days to reequip their retinue and rest when Sansa stole from her room and into her husband’s. Oberyn and Ellaria lay in bed curled around one another in sleep, their sheets twisting and tumbling around them and halfway off their bed. The flickering light of Sansa’s candle lit their skin as though it were polished cedar. Ellaria never stirred but Oberyn’s eyes did slide open when she set the candleholder upon the sideboard. He raised a sleepy arm and beckoned her closer with sluggish fingers.

Her own hands twisting in her nightshift, Sansa blew out the candle and cautiously stepped towards her husband and his lover. The dark concealed her blushing and she remembered Tyrion’s words that in the dark he was the knight of flowers himself—she might pretend Oberyn to be any man in the closeness of tangled sheets, but she would not dishonor him so. Tyrion Lannister had found her this savior and she would not wish for Tyrion’s arms when he was now taken from her. They might have loved one another, in a different time with different deaths. She would pray for that other Sansa to love and obey Tyrion as he truly did have her wellbeing at heart when he gave her to Oberyn Martell. For now she had a Dornishman as her task of loving.

"I would be a wife tonight, my prince."

"Oh would you now?" he murmured, warm hands sliding around her waist to pull her closer. His voice was still sleep-filled and rough, where hers had been trembling with alertness. Sansa let him turn their bodies so she was under his, her arm brushing against Ellaria’s side and awakening the woman from her slumber. There was no time to talk with the other woman, however, as Oberyn pressed slow kisses to her throat and down her chest. His hands inched her nightshift up her legs and soon her husband was kissing the tops of her thighs.

Sansa would have perhaps curled her legs away from him then, shyness taking over her resolve, but Ellaria—awake enough now to know what was happening—turned Sansa’s head to the side for a slow, distracting kiss. The kisses on her thighs continued, her legs held gently by strong hands, as Sansa allowed her mouth open and moaned into Ellaria’s. The moan turned into a shocked gasp, however, when Oberyn licked a hot stripe up Sansa’s flower.

"He can kiss you there until you will hardly be able to walk. You would need to be carried to the litter, should we leave tomorrow—or have your meals delivered here, for you would not make it back to your chamber. And yet," Ellaria’s lips had been moving against Sansa’s as she spoke but now they left hers as lithe fingers smoothed over Sansa’s still-clothed breasts and tweaked one of the nipples there, "you would awake a maid in the eyes of a maester, despite the sounds and sweat your husband drew from you in the night."

"I—I—" it was difficult to think while a hungry mouth lapped and kissed at her sex, but Sansa mustered her will, "I meant to give up my maidenhead, so that—" Suddenly she felt foolish and she twitched away from Ellaria, trying to free herself from whatever Oberyn was doing. Coming here was a mistake—she was as the whores these two had taken to their bed in King’s Landing, nothing more surely. Now that her eyes had adjusted to the darkness she could just barely see Ellaria and Oberyn’s forms curling around her own, and there was the faintest glitter from Oberyn’s eyes as he spoke.

"What would you say of me if I told you, dear Sansa, that there are no maidenheads in Dorne? No bedding sheets, and certainly no gory mess upon them?"

Her body tingled where Oberyn had been so lately occupied as he looped his arms under her waist and laid his head on her stomach. His words rumbled in his chest, causing her to ache for his touch once more. Ellaria held one of Sansa’s hands, kissing the fingertips and knuckles as Oberyn waited for a response. She finally stuttered one out, her voice tiny and uncertain.

"How else do you prove the bride was a virgin?"

"Her word that she wished to be one for her husband—nothing more," was the reply between a few nuzzling kisses at her flank, followed by a brief laugh, "it is also why women very rarely marry outside of Dorne. Too many people caring too much about beds not their own." Sansa wished she had not blown out the candle so that she might have a little actual light to study her paramours in detail—for they would be her paramours. Ellaria wanted Sansa as much or more as Oberyn did, at least from the hot glances she caught from each of them. But still her curiosity begged her to voice a last question of Dornish tradition. It was so different here—more than even King’s Landing had been from Winterfell.

"But the blood?" Her husband’s sigh wasn’t one of frustration, instead it was closer to resigned despair. He lifted himself up on one elbow and smoothed a hand from Sansa’s hip to her ribs, sweeping his thumb along the underside of her breast. In the dim light it was difficult to make out his face, but she knew his eyes were fixed on hers.

"There is no roughness, no rush, and if a man properly cares for his woman, there need be only a trickle of blood—if any at all. I am honored that this night you chose to entrust me with such a violent act on your body, my Sansa, but I am as I have always been. My lovers will never know pain from my hand," Oberyn murmured, leaning in to kiss her belly before nipping gently at her hip and saying with a chuckle, "nor shall they know it from my cock."

Come the morning Ellaria’s words were proven untrue—Sansa was a bit ginger on her feet from how little sleep she’d gotten on account of Oberyn’s lovemaking, but she walked about the chamber quite under her own power. Oberyn’s words that there would be no blood however were shockingly true. Sansa knew herself to be a maid before entering these rooms last night, before sharing—it had been sharing, truly—her body with her husband and Ellaria, and in the bright light of the hot Dornish morning the bedclothes were as white as snow save where her slick and Oberyn’s seed had dried. If she squinted there was perhaps the barest tinges of pink, but that was more easily the first wisp of her moonblood on her smallclothes than the bloody stain presented at the breakfast following her wedding.

The part of her that had died with her father and returned as a spirit to haunt her cynically wondered if Lord Tyrion Lannister would have done the same for her as her current husband. She knew her answer before she even finished the thought—Tyrion’s ability to protect her had been great indeed before his father’s arrival to the capitol, but each day saw his influence wane and her danger increase as she went unbedded and without a child. Had he put a babe in her then perhaps Lord Tywin would have arranged them be sent to Casterly Rock or perhaps even to a small hold outside of the walls of King’s Landing to allow them privacy as Sansa grew heavy with child.

But Tyrion had not put a child in her—and Sansa had been too afraid of having him turn on her once she was truly bound to him in the eyes of the gods to ever seek his bed. Her brave dwarf had tried to care for too many at once and that was his mistake—his heart ruling his head, rather than behaving as Oberyn and taking counsel from his heart but not allowing it to rule. Her Dornish husband had told her, weeks ago on the road, that he had not avenged his sister’s death as he’d meant to. Sansa had felt shame at his words initially, feeling cold for the first time since they’d truly arrived in Dorne, but then shame was replaced by utter gratitude.

_"My dear sister’s spirit rests better knowing I chose to save another like her. Elia would not crave blood to wash her bones in her crypt but instead losennta and rose water. It is I who would tear a man’s heart from his chest and set it atop her grave." He rode next to the litter she shared with Ellaria, his horse picking its footing carefully along the stony road._

_"I am sorry my plight prevented your aim, my lord," Sansa said, feeling suddenly very small and worthless until Oberyn laughed and spoke again._

_"As I said, if my sister could speak she would rather I remember her smiles without pain and not think over-much on what was done to her. She is buried as a proper Dornish lady, and no more harm may befall her from any man. You, my Sansa, are alive and you were very much in danger of harm befalling you at any turn. I could not save Elia, but I could save you."_

**Author's Note:**

> The following was deleted from FFTIA because it was written early in the process and the main story has gone in a very different direction than the original draft was. In the original draft Oberyn did not fight the Mountain at all but rather decided to skip it because of Sansa, and the knights/ladies surrounding the Oberyn/Sansa/Ellaria story hadn’t been fleshed out very much at all. The trust dynamics hadn’t been fleshed out very well either, and it ended up not being able to fit in all.
> 
> TLDR: I like the story I’m putting up just fine, but I like how this turned out too and didn't want to totally delete it. Plus our ship needs more happy smut. So here we go, have some happy almost-there-smut…yaaaaay.


End file.
